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So I've been making weird guitar music for a few years and now I've got a couple Yamaha Refaces and all of a sudden I'm thinking it might be a good time to add some percussive noises to my stuff. Not to get all dancey or whatever but just... for texture, and the occasional making things sound a little more... beaty. I dunno, I've never played around with one and it seems like time to start. But I don't know anything about them, so I'm asking for recommendations. Requirements:

1. $300 (ish) or under
2. Pretty easy to figure out
3. I'm way more interested in hardware than software
4. Easy to connect to my pedals

Beyond that... I have no idea. Novation? Volca? Teenage Engineering?

Errant Tiger wrote:So I've been making weird guitar music for a few years and now I've got a couple Yamaha Refaces and all of a sudden I'm thinking it might be a good time to add some percussive noises to my stuff. Not to get all dancey or whatever but just... for texture, and the occasional making things sound a little more... beaty. I dunno, I've never played around with one and it seems like time to start. But I don't know anything about them, so I'm asking for recommendations. Requirements:

1. $300 (ish) or under
2. Pretty easy to figure out
3. I'm way more interested in hardware than software
4. Easy to connect to my pedals

Beyond that... I have no idea. Novation? Volca? Teenage Engineering?

I can't necessarily "recommend" it, because I've never actually used one, but I've been considering one of these:

https://hackaday.io/project/164521-drum ... um-machine

Price is pretty decent and you can add some randomness to it, which is cool IMO because the monotonous nature of drum machines has always bugged me.

For a drum machine, I don't think you could do better than the Behringer 808 for the money, but it sounds like a sample player would be more useful for you, in which case I would recommend the Volca Sample 2. You can't sample in directly but you can transfer over USB.

I like the Volca Drums, which is a drum synthesiser. Volca Sample is also good, but that's a sample player. So it depends on what you want.

I found the Volca Sample to be a much more fun drum machine for me than the Beats, because of some of the other features, and there are plenty of good drum samples in it plus I added some cool ones of my own.

But depending what flavour you're after, I'd recommend either!

The Arturia Impact Drumbrute seems to pack a lot into a $300 analog drum machine.
I would probably go for that over Volcas or Pocket Operators. 1/4” cables so it doesn’t need any special cables. I am sure the Sequencer is fun and it seems to sound pretty good.

Oh yeah I forgot the drumbrute was that cheap. I agree it's probably a better choice for the budget, better connectivity and larger and more tactile.

Drumbrute impact is good value. Model cycles is cool and different. A used digital thing and a distortion pedal is cheap and good fun. Neither option breaks the bank

jirodreamsofdank wrote: but it sounds like a sample player would be more useful for you

I don't know shit about this stuff. Can you elaborate, please?

Well what sort of sounds do you like? All the "drum machines" that have been mentioned are analog or analog style drum machines (808, volca beats, drumbrute), which have a fairly specific and limited set of sounds. With a sample player e.g. the Volca Sample or Elektron Model:Samples, you can play back samples of anything. So load up a bank of your own drum sounds, for example, and you have a drum machine with more options, but usually slightly less control over each specific sound.

Personally I prefer having a sample based "drum machine" as it's more flexible, but I will probably get an analog drum machine again at some point because they sound pretty cool and are fun! So it's all about what you're after.

If you've never really played around with a drum machine before the zenbeats app for yr phone is free and really easy to use. Might be something to get yr feet before you actually buy one. Otherwise I agree with coldbrightsunlight about the sampler option. I would also think that would open things up to get more nontraditional drum sounds and have those percussive textures you were looking for... The model samples seems pretty neat and I just read they have an app that makes it easy to transfer samples from yr phone to the unit relatively easy.

Probably over your budget and not a drum machine per say but I love my 1010 blackbox. I rarely use it but that's because I mostly noodle on my guitar. It is a really great sampler. Really cool for lofi jazz/hip hop stuff. I'd give it a look. The UI is really simple to understand and navigate through. I mostly use it to play drum beats while I mess around with my nord electro doing jazzy hip hop piano stuff.

The sampler and the app recommendations are both solid alternatives for drums/percussion/boom noises. I would imagine out of the more normal drum machines mentioned, the Arturia has the most range in regards to being able to sculpt the sound, I am sure it can make great and noisy textures too.

Not sure if you use Apple stuff but you can do a ton with Patterning, even on the iPhone version. It has a great interface, is easily set-up for unique poly-meter/poly-rhythms. It has a massive library of great sounds that are organized into kits (user community provided samples/kits, tons of cool stuff sampled), you can make your own kits with the individual samples, etc.. I would start there and decide if you need/want anything else. You can go a long way with just Patterning as it has a lot of great parameters (for the sample, for effects built-in, for the sequencer).
I own quite a bit of synth/drum machine hardware - this app is a badass.

coldbrightsunlight wrote:Well what sort of sounds do you like? All the "drum machines" that have been mentioned are analog or analog style drum machines (808, volca beats, drumbrute), which have a fairly specific and limited set of sounds. With a sample player e.g. the Volca Sample or Elektron Model:Samples, you can play back samples of anything. So load up a bank of your own drum sounds, for example, and you have a drum machine with more options, but usually slightly less control over each specific sound.

Personally I prefer having a sample based "drum machine" as it's more flexible, but I will probably get an analog drum machine again at some point because they sound pretty cool and are fun! So it's all about what you're after.

A good question, for sure, that I should really put some thought into. I like lots of different kinds of sounds, but have no idea what'll sounds good for my own purposes. Maybe a sampler is the way to go. The Novation Circuit seems like it does it all - sampler, sequencer, etc...

Not sure what kind of sounds do you have in mind to get out of a drum machine, but every $300-ish drum machine I've tried sounds cheesy and dated to me and can't associate them without anything but 80s stuff (industrial, electro, synth-pop, etc.)
I'd definitely get a sampler instead, or even the Volca Sample now that transfer of samples are much easier.